Rami's Readings #26 - Half Year Special!
Welcome to Rami’s Readings #26 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, videos, Twitter threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering technology, business, culture, fashion, travel and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.
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So. Quite an eventful week! The search effort for Titan ended with revelations of an implosion. An attempted coup (still unclear?) ended with Prigozhin (Wagner) “transferring” to Belarus after his forces got within a few hours of Moscow. The crisis in Russia kept me glued to Twitter the entire weekend.
🥳 Half Year Special!
Stepping into the six-month milestone of my weekly newsletter, it’s time to take stock. Here are the lessons I’ve learned along the way:
I will celebrate with a cupcake tonight! Just don’t tell Coach Gregory Svoboda
📈 Top 3 Newsletters
According to Substack’s statistics:
🤖 AI Reads
AudioPaLM: A Large Language Model That Can Speak and Listen
Notes: Audio × PaLM. Paper. Another impressive model.
OpenLLaMA: An Open Reproduction of LLaMA
Notes: From Berkeley AI Research, a permissively licensed reproduction of LLaMA.
We are releasing 3B, 7B and 13B models trained on 1T tokens. We provide PyTorch and JAX weights of pre-trained OpenLLaMA models, as well as evaluation results and comparison against the original LLaMA models.
Emerging Architectures for LLM Applications
Notes: Biased, but an interesting read nonetheless from a16z. I pointed out in this newsletter that the developer experience of in-context learning & prompt engineering is superior to fine-tuning or adapting a LLM.
It’s usually easier than the alternative: training or fine-tuning the LLM itself. You don’t need a specialized team of ML engineers to do in-context learning. You also don’t need to host your own infrastructure or buy an expensive dedicated instance from OpenAI.
UK to host first global summit on Artificial Intelligence
Notes: Additional scholarship funding for US-UK study.
💼 Business Reads
India: Internet Shutdowns Hurt Vulnerable Communities
Notes: Must read from HRW.
96 percent of subscribers in India use their mobile devices to access the internet, while only 4 percent have access to fixed line internet. Mobile connectivity is even more critical in rural areas, as 94 percent of fixed line connections are in urban areas. […] Internet shutdowns also make it much harder for rural communities to conduct basic banking, pay utility bills, and to apply for and access official documents.
Russia’s Ruble Slides on Capital-Flight Fears
Notes: Side effect the attempted coup caused an instantaneous 10% drop in the ruble. Expecting further decline on Monday.
Carlos Ghosn Sues Nissan for $1 Billion in Damages Over Ouster
Notes: The saga continues.
In 2020, a UN panel found that Ghosn’s detention in a Japanese jail for more than 100 days was neither necessary nor reasonable and violated his rights. The decision to arrest Ghosn four times in a row so as to extend his detention was “fundamentally unfair,” according to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
These Are World’s Most Expensive Cities for Luxury Living
Notes: New York City and Dubai ascending. Where’s Australia? HNWI inflows do not appear to be affecting luxury prices.
The World’s Empty Office Buildings Have Become a Debt Time Bomb
Notes: I do not have sympathy for CRE landlords, but the sums are monumental and a crash will have a domino effect on the rest of the economy.
Old Point National Bank has a 6-Month CD with a rate >6%
Notes: Better than SPRXX (Fidelity Money Market Fund) and I bonds interest rates.
That is all for this week.
I wrote a disclosure for this newsletter in #7. Please consider reading it.
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